A Dream in the Desert 



Like Elysian rivers the musical flow 

 Glides over rock-crystals as white as the snow ; 

 The clear sound-ripples in soft singing spray, 

 Steal over my tent at the death of the day, 

 While melody's magic entrances my ear, 

 And this is the rapturous song that I hear. 



"But tell me, good friend," interrupted Wewoka, "how 

 can a mountain sing? And how can there be music in the 

 voice of the wind? Mountains are mostly rocks; melody comes 

 from living things that sing. I have heard the lark and the 

 plover, and now and then on the wide spaces of the wind- 

 blown prairies I have heard the curlew's call; but ha! ha! 

 I mind me not of hearing a mountain sing. And the winds 

 of the West, they moan and hiss, and sometimes they swirl 

 across the desert sands like demon-ghosts in frenzied flight, 

 but who shall say that the wild winds sing? In their roughest 

 moods they rasp me, and if they whisper low they never 

 soothe my harried heart. The fearsome voice of the wind 

 haunts me like the sighing of some lamented chieftain's 

 ghost. Mountains have no melody for me, and the winds 

 that blow across their shaggy brows sob and moan and 

 sigh, but to my sad soul they never sing." 



"Hist! Silence!" said the Piute. "The Great Spirit 

 may have secrets of song that mortal musicians have never 

 known. My chieftain sire surely heard the old Truckee 

 Mountain sing. Many times I've heard him tell such tales 

 around the wigwam fire. And in my memory I am hearing 

 it now, as of old. Wewoka, will you hear the mountain sing? 

 My chieftain sire said it sang a song of civilization. Listen! 

 A sound of music is on the wind. It is the mountain sing- 

 ing, the old Truckee Mountain: 



297 



